【推荐1】Microsoft Corp founder Bill Gates caught people’s eye in a recent interview, when he suggested that robots should be taxed in, order to help humans keep their jobs. Gates is only one of many people in the tech world who have worried about automation and its ________ to workers.

It’s easy to see why the tech world is ________. The rise of machine learning has increased the fear that ________ humans could simply become out of date--________, 3.5 million American truck drivers might soon find their jobs threatened by driverless trucks. Though in the past, technology usually complemented workers ________ replacing them, there’s no law of nature saying the technology of the future will work the same. A few economists even claim that cheap automation has already ________ income from workers to company owners.

Another ________ is that even if the mass of humanity ultimately does find new ways to add value by complementing new technology—to“race with the machines,”as economist Erik Brynjofsson puts it—this transition could take a long time and hurt a lot of people. As Bloomberg View’s Tyler Cowen has noted, wages in Britain fell for four decades at the start of the Industrial Revolution. More ________, we’ve seen very slow and painful adjustment to the impact of globalization. If the machine learning revolution hurts workers for 40 years before ultimately helping them, it might be worth it to ________ that revolution and give them time to adjust.

The main argument against taxing the robots is that it might hold back ________. Growth in rich   countries has slowed markedly in the past decade, suggesting that it’s getting harder and harder to find new ways of doing things. Stagnating productivity, combined with falling business investment, suggests that ________ of new technology is currently too slow rather than too fast—the biggest problem right now isn’t too many robots, it’s too few. Taxing new technology, however it’s done, could make that slowdown worse.

The problem with Gate’s basic proposal is that it’s very hard to tell the difference between new technology that ________ humans and new technology that replaces them. This is especially true over the long term. Power looms（织布机）replaced human weavers back in the Industrial Revolution. ________, people eventually became more productive, by learning to operate those looms. If taxes had slowed the development of power looms, the eventual improvements would have come later.

This is a powerful argument ________ the taxation of automation. Gates is right to say that we should start thinking ahead of time about how to use policy to mitigate（缓和）the unintended consequences of automation. But given the importance of sustaining innovation, we should look at ________ policies.

【推荐2】After staying at home one afternoon for a delivery of discounted sink that never came, Valentin Romanov, a Stockholm IT manager, installed a special lock on his flat’s entrance. When no one is in, deliverymen unlock the door and slip packages inside. Four months on, Mr. Romanov has _________ his spending online and says he cannot imagine life without in-home deliveries. These are sweet words for delivery firms and online retailers (零售商), Amazon included, that are setting up _________ with lock manufacturers to overcome a big obstacle for e-commerce.

Traditional deliveries fail so _________ that a parcel is driven to a home an average of l.5 times in the Nordic region, says Kenneth Verlage, head of business development at PostNord, a logistics (物流) giant operating in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. It is an expensive _________ made worse, he says, by the fact that recipients have still often had to wait for a failed delivery. Some deliverers leave packages on doorsteps, but this _________ theft. Of 1,000 Americans surveyed this year by Shorr, a packaging firm, nearly a third had been victims of “porch piracy”, as this is known. Two-fifths _________ certain online purchases for fear of it.

A number of firms now sell wirelessly connected locks which a delivery person can open using a passcode or smartphone app after the _________ has issued a temporary authorization before leaving home or remotely. Deliveries are filmed with an indoor security camera paired with the lock. The short videos are sent to parcel addressees and typically _________, comically in Mr. Romanov’s view, with a jiggle (抖动) of the door handle from outside to show that the departing delivery person has locked up.

Amazon began offering in-home deliveries in 37 American cities in November. Shoppers who have had a special _________ and camera installed can select in-home delivery at checkout. Like most firms __________ the service, Amazon is tight-lipped about user numbers. The boss of August Home, a San Francisco maker of in-home delivery locks, says that already hundreds of thousands of delivery drivers, dog-walkers, cleaners and Airbnb guests use its app __________ to enter others’ homes.

Offerings are __________. In 2018 August Home will go to Australia and Britain, and PostNord will launch in-home delivery in four Nordic countries. Walmart and Sears have tried it: Sears even tested unattended appliance repairs. Five logistics firms and two Swedish supermarket chains are trying or using locks from Glue, a firm based in Stockholm, for in-home deliveries.

__________ suspect these efforts will not amount to much. Plenty of __________ will be fearful about theft.

Rhino Security Labs, a Seattle computer-security firm, claims it hacked into and shut off the video in one Amazon lock-and-camera system. In-home deliveries are incompatible (不兼容的) with theft alarms. And what if an improperly fenced-off dog or cat slips outside? Or a valuable item on display gets knocked over? These are __________ questions. But e-commerce firms have unlocked harder ones.

【推荐3】Bad Dreams Are Good!

Most of us dream, whether we remember them or not. What are dreams for? A handful of _______ dominate. Sigmund Freud famously maintained that they reveal hidden truths and wishes. More recent research suggests that they may help us process intense emotions, or perhaps sort through and strengthen memories, or _______ random neuron（神经元） activity, or prepare responses to threatening situations. Others argue that dreams have no evolutionary function, but simply _______ personal concerns.

Despite being largely unsupported by _______, Freud’s view maintains a strong following around the world. Researchers found that students in the U.S., South Korea, and India were much more likely to say that dreams reveal hidden truths than to accept better _______ theories. In the same study, respondents said that dreaming about a plane crash would cause them more _______ than an official warning about a terrorist attack. Even if dreams can't foretell the future, they seem to _______ our shared fascinations. The majority of dreams occur during REM sleep （深度睡眠） cycles, of which the average person has four or five a night.

A study of Canadian university students found the most common dream topics include school, falling, being chased, and arriving too late for something. For all the commonalities dreams _______, they vary across time and culture — people who grew up watching black-and-white TV are more likely to dream in black and white. A 1958 study _______ that compared with Japanese people, Americans dreamed more about being locked up, losing a loved one, finding money, being ________ dressed or encountering a mad person. Japanese people were more likely to dream about school, trying repeatedly to do something, being paralyzed with fear, or “wild, violent beasts.” If human dreams sound ________, bear in mind that even negative ones can have positive effects.

In a study of students taking a French medical school entrance exam, 60 percent of the dreams they had beforehand ________ a problem with the exam, such as being late or leaving an answer blank. But those who reported ________ about the exam, even bad ones, did better on it than those who didn’t. So the next time you dream about an education related experience in which you are unable to answer the questions or solve a problem, don’t __________: It’s probably totally meaningless. Then again, your brain might be practicing so you'll be ________ if such an event ever comes to pass.